“You’re doing too much, Marco,” I said, feeling guilty.

“I was bored staring at those same four walls. I’m glad to be out,” he said, focusing his attention on the snow. “Which way did you walk coming in and out?

“I should have been more careful,” I admitted, feeling terrible. “I think I walked just about everywhere.”

“But you didn’t drive, right? You parked on the road and walked in?”

“Yeah.”

His brow furrowed as he studied the partially snow-covered ground. “I don’t see any tire marks, which means whoever drove down the lane didn’t drive all the way in.”

“Why not?” I asked. “Do you think they were worried about getting stuck?”

He shook his head. “No. Those tire marks you showed me were from a truck. The double tire marks so close together suggests a big one—a dually.”

“What’s a dually?”

He chuckled. “You really ain’t from around here. It’s a pickup with an extra set of tires in the back. It’s good for hauling trailers or heavy loads. There’s quite a few guys up in these parts who fancy themselves NASCAR drivers. They’ll haul their pieces of shit a couple of hours to the Smoky Mountain Speedway in Maryville or North Carolina or if they’re any good, like the Grisham boys, down to Georgia.” He grinned. “This is the land of NASCAR, Carly. You’ll need to pick a team come spring.”

“A team?”

“Max’ll start showin’ NASCAR races at the tavern. Everyone has a favorite driver. The guys’ll expect you to pick one.”

“They don’t ask me about football.”

“That’s because it’s football. NASCAR’s a religion down here.” He laughed when he saw my face. “Don’t you worry. Max and I will get you up to speed enough to pick a driver and rattle off a few stats. It’ll help with your tips.” He pushed out a long breath, rubbing his chin in a way that told me he wasn’t completely unaffected by being here. “In any case, back to more serious matters…like the reason the truck likely didn’t pull up to the house. I would say they were hopin’ for the element of surprise, except you can hear everything out here. Especially if it was a dually. Lula would have heard the engine.” He hopped off the step into the yard. “Makes me think they were blockin’ her in.”

“You mean her car?” I asked. “So she couldn’t drive away?”

“Yeah, but she could have run on foot.” He turned to look at me. “You think you can show me where you walked?”

I nodded, both relieved he was taking this seriously and worried sick for Lula.

“Get the camera out of the Explorer. We’ll take photos if we find something suspicious.”

I hurried to the SUV and grabbed the camera, then returned to find him several feet away from the porch, studying the ground. Embedded in the snow was a large, heavy-tread footprint. No way that belonged to Lula, or me for that matter.

“Put this on the ground next to that print and take a photo.”

He handed me a quarter, and I gave him a strange look as I took it.

“It’s to show the size of the print. If we turn these photos in to the evidence lab, they’ll be able to compare the size of the print to the quarter to determine the shoe size.”

I set the quarter down and snapped several photos, then showed them to Marco to make sure they were good enough.

He nodded and scanned the ground. “It’s too damn bad the snow’s mostly melted on this section because it looks like the man walked right up to the porch, but I don’t see any sign of ’im walkin’ away, and I sure don’t see any smaller prints. I suspect the snow they crossed over on the way back to the truck has all melted.”

“I can’t believe I didn’t notice any prints before,” I said, feeling like a fool.

“They were likely in the shadows,” Marco said, “and the prints are mostly gone. It just looks like patchy ground. I was specifically lookin’ for them.”

“So you think someone kidnapped her?” I asked, my stomach falling to my feet.

“I don’t know.” He shook his head and turned to me. “But there’s not a deputy who will take this as a case. Just because the truck parked at the end of the drive doesn’t mean she was kidnapped. In fact, all the times she’s run off, she never once took her own car. All of that is gonna be held against her.”

We walked around the back of the house to look for more prints, only finding the ones I’d left earlier.

“She has an outhouse?” he asked in dismay.

“It stinks to high heaven,” I said, wrinkling my nose. When he gave me a horrified look, I added, “I was looking for Lula, not using it.”

“I know people live like this around these parts. Hell, I’ve come across ’em on calls, but I never once guessed that Lula lived this way.”

“Does Max know?” Marco and Max were best friends, and if anyone would know, it would be Max.

He shook his head. “I don’t think so. Otherwise, I suspect he would have done somethin’ about it. That boy has a good heart. More so than most people realize.”

“I’ve seen it,” I said. I’d experienced it firsthand after Seth’s murder. I’d left my unregistered gun next to Seth’s body, and even though he’d only known me for a matter of hours, Max had intended to recover and hide it from the sheriff deputies…He would have too, except Jerry had gotten to it first. He’d used it to stop Carson Purdy, and now it was locked up tight in the Hensen County Sheriff’s evidence room. Jerry had told them he’d found it behind the motel, so they were none the wiser that it was mine.

But in the days that had followed Seth’s murder, Max had been worried enough about my safety that he’d given me a gun for protection to replace it. (Which had also ended up in the sheriff’s evidence room, although this one was linked to both me and Max.) And Max always, always protected Ruth and me from irate customers. He was a good man…The only thing that made me nervous about him was his connection with his father, but it occurred to me that Marco might know a thing or two about that.

“How close is Max to his father?”

“They’re amicable,” he said carefully.

“Amicable can mean a lot of things.”

“Are they best buds? No. Bart Drummond never fostered a close relationship with his boys.”

That didn’t fit with what Tiny had said about Wyatt. Then again, I knew people had different perceptions of shared events. I wasn’t ready to dismiss his observations just yet.

“How long have you known Max?” I asked as we started walking around the shack toward the SUV.

Marco chuckled. “Since kindergarten. We went through all thirteen years of school together, and I suppose that wasn’t enough, because we roomed together in college. But he left the university at the beginning of his senior year after Wyatt got arrested and quit the family business. Max had to take over.”

“What made Max decide to go to college when Wyatt didn’t?”

“Max presumed Wyatt would inherit it all. That’s what his father told him. That left Max with a whole lot of nothing. So he decided to forge his own path. He was determined to get a business degree and open his own business, but then his daddy came callin’ and Max gave it all up to come home.”